A probe card is used to inspect electrical characteristics of a test subject, for example, a semiconductor device (IC chip) such as a memory circuit or a logic circuit, formed on a semiconductor wafer (hereinafter, referred to as a wafer for simplicity) in large numbers. The probe card includes a plurality of probes, each of the probes being installed to be correspondent to a plurality of electrode pads formed on the test subject (for example, IC chip). Each probe makes an electrical connection between a tester and the IC chip by contacting electrically with the electrode pad of the IC chip, thereby rendering inspection signals delivered between the tester and the IC chip.
Recently, an array of the electrode pads becomes narrow-pitched as the IC chip is highly integrated, thereby an array of the probes becoming narrow-pitched. The probe card has been proposed to accommodate such a trend of the narrow pitching of the probes in, e.g., Japanese Laid-open Publication No. 8-50146 or No. 11-133062.
Technologies disclosed therein are all based on a lithography technology and using same. In the technologies, to arrange the probes correspondently to an array of the plurality of inspecting electrodes, the plurality of probes are formed simultaneously on a surface of a contactor substrate made of, e.g., a ceramic, silicon or the like. The probe installed in the probe card includes a contactor electrically contacting with, e.g., the inspecting electrode and a beam maintaining the contactor at a leading end thereof. The probes are arranged on the contactor substrate in a predetermined array, thereby making each of a plurality of contactors electrically contact with a different one of the inspecting electrodes.
However, to adopt the lithography technology, a photomask needs to have a pattern corresponding to an array pattern of the probes in the probe card. In other words, the probes should be manufactured by using the specific photomask. Further, the probe includes a plurality of parts, e.g., the contactor and the beam. To manufacture the plurality of parts, a plurality of photomasks needs to be provided. Lately, the number of kinds of the test subject increases in an era of small quantity batch production. It is required that the probe card should be appropriately used for each of the various kinds of the test subjects, the number of which increases nowadays. Accordingly, the required number of the photomasks increases greatly such that lots of time and cost are needed for manufacturing the photomasks, thereby also increasing the cost for manufacturing the probe card.